“Look here, sheikh,” said the American, “you’ve got to give us food and lights, and some tent-cloth to sleep on, if you run this high-class hotel.”
“What will the Princess say?” was the lugubrious reply.
“What will she say when the Prince of the Jews speaks with her and tells her how badly you treated us?”
“It shall be done, Khawaja,” and the sheikh gave the necessary orders, which resulted in the arrival soon afterwards of three native lamps, with a supply of oil, some fresh bread and a further provision of the detestable compound of dates, and three pieces of goat’s-hair cloth. Meanwhile, Mansfield had been laboriously bringing in sand, a spadeful at a time, thus forming a substructure on which one of the tent-cloths was laid to make a bed for Cyril. Then the door was shut, and the prisoners were left to their reflections.
“They may call this place the house of the Lady Zenobia as much as they like,” said Mr Hicks aggressively, “but I’ll stick out that it was the Lady Zenobia’s burying-lot, no less.”
“This place—a mausoleum?” asked Mansfield, with marked disgust.
“I guess so. Look at those shelves—all empty, of course; but there’s a choice collection of miscellaneous remains in the room down the passage there, where the light comes in through a hole in the roof. The Arabs have rifled the place, you bet, and lugged the corpses into daylight that they might be sure of missing nothing. All mummied, of course, so you needn’t look so sick.”
“But we can’t stay here!” cried Mansfield, in horror.
“I guess we’ve got to. The lady upstairs don’t calculate to be trifled with, you see. But I’ve slept in many worse locations than this, for it’s clear that the last interment took place several hundreds of thousands of years back, so the deceased won’t interfere with our physical comfort; and if you see a ghost, just hurry up and tell me, and I’ll interview him for the ‘Crier.’ Suppose you fly around and fix things up for the night now. Our supper don’t need much cooking, unfortunately, but the water’s good, any way. You might put out two of those lamps, for it’s past sundown, and I’d as lief keep a light going all night. Guess we’ll fix up one of these pieces of tent-cloth to keep off the draught from that passage. I’m going to sit up with the boss, so I’m better without a bed.”
“No,” said Mansfield, “I’m going to look after him.”